Artist Biography Frédéric Bruly Bouabré was born in 1923 in Zépréguhé, Ivory Coast. He was among the first Ivorians to be educated by the French colonial Government and also learnt French. The origin of his work is found in a revelation through an experience he had on 11th March 1948: he had a vision in which he saw seven colored suns in the sky. It led him to the conclusion that his presence on earth was prophetic and decided to call himself “Cheik Nadro”, which means “the one who never forgets”. Since then, he created several drawings which are part of a large cycle called ‘World Knowledge’. He created a 448 letters alphabet called the “The Universal Bété syllabary”. Bouabré always thought that African people deeply desired to learn but that they required a new African and universal language to comprehend all these knowledge. He passed away in January 2014. The origin of all of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré’s work stems from a revelatory experience: on March 11, 1948, “the heavens opened up before my eyes and seven colorful suns described a circle of beauty around their Mother-Sun, I became Cheik Nadro: ‘He who does not forget.’” From then on he tackled every field of knowledge and collected his research in manuscripts about arts and traditions, poetry, tales, religion, esthetics, and philosophy, revealing himself to be an astonishing thinker, poet, encyclopedist, creator. Searching for a way to preserve and transmit the knowledge of the Bété people, as well as the knowledge of the entire world, he invented an alphabet of 448 monosyllabic pictograms to represent phonetic syllables. This endeavor earned Bouabré the legendary reputation of being another Champollion, in reference to the great scholar and linguist Jean-Paul Champollion (1790-1832), who discovered the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs.